My Divine Right
by GaryGibbon
Summary: While navigating their way through the docks of Fenikusushiti, a young group of friends stumble upon the manifestation of everything they stand against; a princess in black, smoking cigarettes as she waits for a ferry to take her to the North. Oneshot.


**GaryGibbon**

**My Divine Right**

They sneak out of the unlocked container with nothing on their backs.

The port of Fenikusushiti, The City of the Phoenix, is bustling with the twenty-four hour naval traffic of a capital city, the mournful cries of the boats mingling with the clash of heavy machinery and the chatter and shouts of civilian workers as they scurry like ants amongst the mountains of goods. Cargo freighters from across the world dock and undock, holds crammed with cloth, opium, lumber, frozen pig-sheep meat, unrefined coca, steel and much more besides. Clerks scurry around with piles of logbooks and itineraries that contain itemized accounts of over a third of the Fire Nation's trade-based income. There's literal regiments of civilian ships, Water Tribe canoes sharing dry-docks with Fire Nation steamers, UR speedboats tethered next to Earth Kingdom yachts. Coal powered cranes pick up the great corrugated containers, their locked holds full of promise. Men swarm over the half-formed shape of an administrator's office, sparks from acetylene welders and chi-powered lightning creating an edifice to free commerce. And look, over there; a torpedo boat with the symbol of the Eternal Flame, undergoing renovations after actions against pirates in the archipelagos, propelled explosives loaded onto the warship in huge wooden crates, EXPLOSIVE: HANDLE WITH CARE stencilled on the sides in red block characters.

To Zaheer, the fire is a hated symbol. It's one that practically oozes oppression; the sigil of an entire nation seized tight by a family of pretenders to transcendence, who did nothing but drive them to commit atrocities in the name of total control, of an autocracy that chewed up people as easily as furnace would coal. His lips curl in distaste as he stares at the seal. If you gaze at it long enough, you can hear the screams of 37 million monks on the wind, roasted alive in an act of unfathomably deep paranoia. They almost drown out the screams of his own parents.

Zaheer feels the firm grip of a hand on his shoulder, and he looks up into its owner's gold-yellow eyes.

"Come on, Za," P'Li says, her third eye shut tightly, hidden out of sight by thick cloth soiled with months of use. The tale that all who stare into the third eye of a doragon-shawill meet a painful end has some truth to it; once it opens, death follows wherever it turns its unblinking gaze. Her hair is bound back in a thick braid, and the tattoo of a caged wren is emblazoned on her hand; the symbol is as much the mark of a prized warrior-slave as the screaming in her dreams that wakes Zaheer up in the night, forcing him to stroke her hair and whisper reassurances to her while P'Li sobs and weeps into his shirt, reliving the battles only she can see.

"We need to get moving," the unnaturally tall child-soldier states. "We can't stay long here. Let's find a boat to the North. Maybe then we can get some answers on who the Red Lotus are from this Unalaq guy."

They'd found the letter in Aiwei's hands, back in Ba Sing Se. The quiet, gang-affiliated bookkeeper had gotten quite animated when they asked him who the Water Tribesman was, and he launched into a lengthy tirade about how he was an anarchist, _just like us, and he knows about this organisation called the Red Lotus, and they're apparently anarchists as well? Isn't that great? I don't know much about the group itself, you'll have to go up to the capital, Natuila, in order to check out his claims._ He gave them the letter as proof and promised to send word of their arrival to the Northerner. Fenikusushiti is merely a stopover, a resting place while they try to find a boat to the Northern wastes.

They're lucky when they check the arrivals board; a UR cargo ship named _Mizu no Hebi_ is transporting refined copper to the newly constructed metalworks at Iqaluit, the largest city outside of the capital, in eight hours. Ghazan smiles at their display of fortune, green eyes twinkling behind a mop of raven-black hair. Out of their foursome, he's the most sceptical about the whole 'anarchist' philosophy, but Zaheer gave him a way out of the all-consuming gang warfare in the slums of Republic City, helping him up onto his feet and into a hospital after they found him bleeding to death under a streetlight - 11 years old and already a casualty of war - and he's never left their side since. He looks over at Zaheer, mischief glinting in his gaze.

"Now we're on the trolley! Come on, let's go find some chow!"

Eight minutes later, they're secluded in an artificial alley formed by the cargo containers, tucking into pork baozis that they 'liberated' from a nearby vendor. Zaheer rips into his meal like a rabid polar-bear dog, a sharp contrast from P'Li who politely nibbles the oversized ball of dough, tearing it into bite sized pieces that she deftly pops into her mouth. Ghazan holds out his baozi for Ming-Hua as she messily attempts takes a bite out of the bun, content as meat juice and pulled, slow-roasted meat runs down her chin.

"Thanks, Gaz." He smiles, a flash of colour hitting his cheeks.

"No problem, Ming," he replies, wrenching a particularly juicy piece of pork belly out of the bun with his teeth. "Anything for a friend." She blushes at that comment, ducking her head down as she tries to hide her smile. The poor girl's unused to all this positive attention; her being born without any arms in the highly superstitious Southern ice fields left her adrift, cast into the ocean as sacrifice for the spirits to satisfy her tribe's blood-tithe, water-spilled blood of the unwanted in exchange for good fortune; a ritual millennia old. Yet she endured the trial by water, and her parents sold her to a circus ring, ashamed and scared of their ameliac waterbender. Ghazan rescued Ming-Hua himself, smashing the locks of the freak's cage she was stored in and personally carrying her out of the burning tent as it collapsed in a pile of ash and smoke. She's grown on him ever since, and he's grown on her too.

Zaheer licks the grease from his fingers, wiping his mouth on his coarse linen shirt, and he folds his arms while he leans on a container.

"You know where the boat is, Gaz?"

"Dock eighteen. We should be able to hop on board via a container, or even through a porthole."

"Excellent. You guys know what we're going to do once we hit Iqaluit?"

"Find somewhere to bunk, I guess," Ming Hua shrugs the stumps of her shoulders in reply. "We'll definitely need to find some warm clothes; it gets colder up North than it does in the South. You think Unalaq will have something to spare us?"

"Maybe. Aiwei said that he came from wealth. He'd have as many clothes as he wants."

"You sound bitter about that, Gaz." The earthbender rolls his eyes.

"Bitter? I dunno, a big cheese like him getting involved into the whole 'anarchy' thing? Stinks like corruption to me. Probably trying to build an army."

"At the age of thirteen? Gaz, he's younger than me."

"So was Aang when he kicked Ozai's butt," interjects Ming-Hua.

"That's different; he's the Avatar." A quiet, awkward silence descends over the foursome as they wait for their boat. They twiddle their thumbs (or in Ming-Hua's case, taps her feet) and occasionally whistle, waiting for their ferry to come. About two hours in, a young woman enters the alleyway, a knapsack over her back as she chooses a place to sit down, a couple of cun away from them.

She looks about twenty, although for all the group know she could be thirty; her thick glasses disguise her age as easily as any makeup. Her hair is loose, glossy black hair rolling down her shoulders with a topknot done in the traditional style of the Fire Nation. She is wearing a simple black jacket and trousers, black hiking boots featureless save for a small gold Eternal Flame printed onto the heels of the shoes. The group tenses when they see her; history has demonstrated to all of them over and over that strangers only bring pain and misery. But their fear is misplaced; she seems intent on reading the book that she's pulled out of her bag, a tome on _Lethal Plants and You: What To and What Not To Boil Into Tea _by the uncle of the Fire Lord, his smiling image printed on a sticker at the top left of the hardback looks up. She grins at the children when she takes notice of the rag-tag group.

"Hello there. And what do they call you four at home?" They glower at her in response, an act to which she shrugs.

"Shy, are we? That's fine. I used to be just like you when I was your age. Preferred to keep my nose in the library books that father maintained. I had no time for talking." She adjusts her spectacles, grabbing the left temple of her frames as she moves them closer to her eyes. Another 15 minutes pass in excruciating silence before she slaps the book shut, standing up as she tucks it away.

"Absolute drivel, I can't believe I'm related to the author. I don't know why my father recommended that book to me. As if I'll be making tea abroad." She smiles, laughing internally at her own little joke. The children remain as silent as ever.

"So," the woman says, changing the subject as she opens a buttoned flap on her black jacket, rummaging around in it for some unknown item, "where are you four headed? You planning on staying in the capital, or moving on to another part of the world?"

Silence.

"Well, I'm going up to the North. I'll be getting a boat called the _Mizu no Hebi_ \- it's a steelworks boat - and I'll be 'searching for my familial honour', as father puts it. Him and his honour, he's always yakking on and on about it. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he had it surgically removed."

She smirks triumphantly as she whips out a silver cigarette carrier, the Eternal Flame etched into the bright metal in red ink. And as she extracts a filter-tip from the case, Zaheer is suddenly hit with a revelation; he knows who this person is. Her face is plastered in state-issue acrylic, bound in canvas and hung up alongside her father's in every school in the land.

"You. You're the Fire Princess! You're Zuko's daughter!"

The four children recoil at the realisation; she's no longer a woman, she is The Woman, the very oppressor who keeps the masses down under her jackboot heel, she who dines on sweetmeats while the world withers and starves. The royal smirks at their reaction while she shoves the carton into her breast pocket, cigarette hanging between her lips.

"Guilty as charged."

Izumi clicks her fingers in a brushing motion, and a pilot light of flame appears at the tips of her fingers. She brings the small light to her cigarette, lighting it and relaxing as the nicotine pours into her lungs.

"And so what if I'm the Fire Princess? I'm nothing like auntie. I'm not a sociopath."

"As if I'm going to believe the words of her cousin." Zaheer brandishes his fist menacingly to underline his point.

"Apologists. Hmf. You'll hate anything if it has "Phoenix" or "Fire" stuck in front of it." Izumi takes the paper out of her mouth, blowing out chemical smoke from her nose like a royal dragon. She retrieves her silver case again, and it remains out long enough for Zaheer to notice the beautifully intricate filigree around the signet of the Royal Family, a pattern done in gold. The princess flicks it open and holds it towards the foursome, white cigarettes neatly rolled within.

"Ciggy? Father says it's a terrible habit, but I don't pay attention to the old codger in any case." Stony silence is her answer; the death-glares of three children from the other side of wealth her response. One of them shrugs.

"Sure, why not. Butt me." Ghazan plucks a tobacco roll from the carton, holding out for the Princess to light with her bending. P'li looks horrified at this act, and her hand subtly reaches to tighten her headband. She can feel her eye beginning to open like a flower, and she cannot afford to expose it to the oxygen the tattoo craves.

"You can't accept gifts from people like her, Gaz," Zaheer cries, incredulous at this betrayal. "What was that whole spiel about rich people you was on about earlier?"

"Oh relax, Za," Ghazan retorts, the filter-tip burning red-hot between his fingers as he nods his thanks to the princess, "it's only a fag. No harm done with bumming one." He raises the cigarette to his lips, taking one long drag. The drug courses through his chest, the bitter smoke lifting the weight off his shoulders and overwhelming his brain for one precious second, and he exhales happily, emerald eyes shining within the fumes.

"That's real neat. Haven't had a good smoko since Gaoling."

Izumi smirks, pushing up her oversized glasses as she stands, pushing herself off the alleyway wall with her foot.

"You should learn to judge people by their character, 'Za' (can I call you Za? Better than calling you boy), not by their status. Grandfather tried that, and all that got him was a nice, toasty jail cell."

"My name is Zaheer. And you're in no position to claim that, tyrant. Once you've seen a hundred corrupt officials, you've seen them all."

"Tyrant? And please, spare me the pseudo-anarchist labels. I've heard it all before."

"You have? Please, oh wise and mighty leader, enlighten us dimwits about where you heard this 'labelling." If Ming-Hua had any fingers, she'd be quoting in the air with them. Izumi takes another drag, ignoring the deliberate attempt to offend her by the ameliac.

"Father makes me sit in on certain meetings of his. He tells me that it's excellent experience for when I rule the throne. And in one of those meetings, father talked with a man called Xai Bau."

That makes the group start. Xai Bau must be a figure of some renown within the anarchist community if these four miscreants have heard of him. Izumi wonders if the boy with the spiky hair has a locket of the radical's portrait on him, judging by the way his expression softens in a strange mixture of admiration and jealousy.

"You met Xai Bau?"

"I just mentioned that, didn't I?"

"Do you know where he is?" The princess shrugs, cigarette flaring red as she breathes in the nicotine.

"I can't say. He was like a spirit; always appearing and disappearing without warning. When he did come, it was always at night. Seems like he didn't want to be overheard by my father's household. The one time I met him, it was at sunset just before the court's closure. " She peers over her glasses, smirking at their eager gazes. She's barely into the story and they're already lapping it up like tiger seals.

"He marched up to my father and announced that he was leaving the White Lotus. Something about them 'becoming slaves to the Avatar' being his last straw. He spouted some nonsense drivel about anarchy and then left. Haven't seen him since. This was about a year ago? He could be anywhere, and frankly, there's no point looking for him. He evidently wants to spend some time alone."

The children's faces fall. Evidently, this man must have meant a lot to them. The kid with the thick mop of hair takes another drag of his ciggy.

"Shame. Would've been real nifty to have met him. Seems we're carrying on up north." The princess arches an eyebrow quizzically.

"You're headed up north as well?" But before the kid can confirm that, the smaller boy with a shock of brown hair clamps a hand over his friend's mouth.

"That's none of your business."

"Oh?" Izumi leers like a predatory cat, the firelight glow of her cigarette casting a sinister glare to her expression. "Why's that?" Zaheer glowers at her.

"Don't test me, royal."

"You're fifteen."

"Sixteen."

"Whatever. I'm only curious. If it upsets you that much, then I won't ask."

Another awkward silence descends over the two parties, during which the fire gutters out on Izumi's cigarette. She sighs, throwing it down beside her to create a field of stars as she retrieves another cigarette from her heirloom case. She jams the cigarette in between her lips, repeating the brushing motion from earlier, willing a minute amount of chi into her fingertips. She's about to offer another of the cigarettes to the ex-Triad member, but she's interrupted by one of the girls, who's almost as tall as she is.

"Why are you doing this?" Izumi blinks in confusion.

"Doing what?"

"Going around the world. Exploring. Surely a good little princess should stay at home and learn how to be her father's puppet?" There's a shaky venom to her voice; despite the vitriol intended in her verbal attack, she's afraid of the woman, and Izumi smiles at the realisation, cigarette clamped in between her teeth.

"A good little princess? Is that what I am to you?" The princess chuckles. "You really have no idea about my family, do you. You think that all my family does is rule? Well then, it's time for a little story."

She uses her left leg to push herself off the wall she's leaning on, drawing herself up to her full height, a stern expression fixed on her face. She is no longer the small yet cocky princess that the children hate; she is the heir to the throne of the most powerful nation in the world, a force of unrelenting industrial might, a island nation that seized the globe with fear a mere three decades ago. She's the product of an aeons-long genetics program, intended to create the perfect human, black haired and yellow eyed and glorious in her imperial majesty. Under her gaze, it's all the aspiring anarchists can do not to fall in line. P'Li even sits down, crossing her legs as she stares up at the manifestation of everything she is supposed to hate with an expression nearing reverence. Izumi folds her arms behind her back, waiting for every disturbance to cease before she begins.

"When father was slightly older than you, he was banished from the Fire Nation for sedition against the crown. He spoke out against a general, aghast with disbelief that he would willingly sacrifice the lives of hundreds of young men for the sake of a few miles. He roamed the world for five years, bitter and angry before he took the throne. He saw the most destitute, desolate, impoverished parts of the world, and broke bread with those who were willing to do so."

There's a spark to Izumi's glare, the glorious, divine blood of her family lending her an unassailable, unchallengeable air. She silently commands them to listen and they do, obeying a silent order for the last time in their lives.

"He defended farming villages in the Earth Kingdom from roaming packs of soldiers, and ran out of the same hamlets once it was discovered he was a firebender. He lived as a refugee in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se for three months. He's lived the lives of the poor. And he resolved to do something about it. Why do you think he's been pouring money into the education budget? Into financing massive redevelopment projects across the nation? Into building a telegraph network across the islands? He wants to see everyone prosper. He hates the idea that people starve in his nation."

Silence meets her. The four children always believed that leaders were a force of destruction, of unnecessary hindrance that prevented man from achieving its true form. They had no idea that a leader could do any sort of good. Izumi continues, folding her arms as she stares at an area of blank space above P'li's head.

"Once when I was young, I threw yuans at beggar children for entertainment, so I could see them fight over the money. Father caught me laughing at them, and he took me aside and told me something I will never forget. He told me that unless I did the same thing as he did all those years ago, go into self-imposed exile and discover what it truly meant to be dirt poor, what it meant to be shovelling dirt for a living, I wouldn't be his heir. I'd evidently learned nothing about the real world, about what life was like outside of the Palace of the Phoenix. So now I'm here, waiting for a ferry to take me spirits knows where. Of course, he told me to wait until I was of an age where I could defend myself."

There's an outraged horror in the quiet that follows. P'Li tightens her headband, sure that if she applies enough pressure than the chi will flow away from her third eye and back down into her stomach. It courses through her like hot water, the rage fuelled energy whispering demands to her to strike the royal down, to obliterate her into ash with a single blast of her power.

"I can respect that attitude," Ghazan replies at last, raising his cigarette as a form of salute. "We could do with more leaders willing to go the extra mile."

"Gaz, what are you saying?" Ming-Hua nudges him with the nub of her shoulder. "Didn't you hear what she said? She threw yuans at kids!"

"True. That I can't forget so easy."He huffs at the cigarette, tapping the ashes onto the ground. They rise like stars, burning in the half-light of the fluorescent lights that have switched on as the sun sets, powered by fresh chi extracted from a man's soul at the low, low price of minimum wage.

"I won't deny what I just said. You think I don't regret it, behaving like a brat and getting my kicks out of seeing others suffer? I'm nothing like auntie." Smoke pours out of her nose. "Nothing like auntie at all."

"I find that hard to believe," snorts Zaheer. "It's not just Azula we're mad about."

"What," she retorts, "you're going to lump the sins of my ancestors all onto my head? I'm honoured."

"Honoured? Your family waged a hundred year war to satisfy a god-complex!"

"Tell me something that isn't in the history books."

"Your family killed all the airbenders!"

"The last remaining ones seem to have forgiven us for that crime."

"The training camps at Shinzong! We've seen them!" The amusement slides off Izumi's face.

"How the heck do you know about that?" The cigarette flies out of her manicured hand as she grabs Zaheer's collar, dragging him so close that their foreheads nearly collide. Her eyes are yellow pits of anger.

"That's classified information; not even the Avatar knows about those. Father razed what was left of the facilities there! He eliminated everyone we could find who was involved with grandfather's project! How do you know about Shinzong?" Ming-Hua's scared; she's the most recent member of the party and she's nowhere near a source of water, and Ghazan is defiant rage, all past amity with the princess long forgotten as he slices a rough-cut chunk of earth out of the ground, hovering it in front of him, ready to turn it into razor-sharp fletchettes of stone and hurl them at the princess.

P'Li sighs, her eyes closed and her muscles tensed as she slowly unties the knots on the back of her filthy headband, and Zaheer's eyes widen at the sight.

"P'Li, you can't control it! You don't need to show her!"

"I do, Za. She needs to know, even if she is one of them." The chi courses through her, rushing to her third eye, ecstatic with the idea of the tattoo being used, channelled into unstoppable might. She braces her stance and breathes deep, inhaling through her nose and exhaling like the philosopher-surgeons taught her to as the cloth falls to the ground. Izumi gasps audibly, letting go of Zaheer.

"It can't be. Father eliminated you all."

The last doragon-sha stands before her, eyes squeezed tight as she breathes, body going through the motions of a basic firebending pattern as she strives to control the chi bubbling inside of her. The third eye sucks in oxygen hungrily, and despite her impressive control, the tattoo is glowing with spiritual energy.

"Za the headband, please I can't take much more," she whimpers, clutching her forehead as she falls to one knee. The tattoo is glowing through the gaps in her grasp, and Zaheer rushes behind her to slip the cloth over the shattered chi meridian, tying it tightly in a complicated knot pattern that jams the spiritual orifice shut. P'li remains on her knees, catching her breath as she looks up at Izumi.

"I was there. I was the last subject that Dr. Ishii took in. Even after he destroyed Shinzong he kept experimenting on me. He wanted me to be his heir."

Izumi's face is stone-cold, a blank mask synonymous with the Imperial Family when they were dealing with things best left behind closed doors. From what father had told her, the doragon-sha were Ozai's attempts to create supersoldiers that could rival even the Avatar. He'd even used one himself, hiring the best of Dr. Ishii's experiments to surreptitiously deal with Aang before he could take out his father. From the descriptions of the silent, thick-set man, he was an unstoppable force. He'd even ignored Zuko's commands in order to finish the job, an act which cost the man his life.

"How did you get out?" P'Li looks to the ruffian on her left, taking his hand as she rises to her feet.

"Zaheer got me out. Ishii's gone now, for good." Izumi reaches for her cigarette holder, thinks better of it, and goes to pick up her cigarette, relighting it with her thumb.

"Well," she hazards, "it's good you got out. Ishii was a monster, and I'm glad he's dead. You did the Fire Nation a great service in killing him."

"I didn't do anything for the Fire Nation," P'Li spits. "They were the ones who did this to me, no matter how indirectly they were involved. As far as I'm concerned, your father condoned them. He should have stopped them the moment he took the throne."

"See, that's why I don't get on with you, princess. Your dad should have done something about Ishii sooner rather than later, but apparently sorting out the colonies was far more important than dealing with a monster like him. Do you know what he did to me to get my light chakra to behave like that?" And then suddenly she gasps, a particularly painful memory swimming to the surface, one with a kindly doctor who watches as P'Li's forehead is carved open by steely knives, cloth jammed into her mouth to prevent her screaming from disturbing the rest of the camp, _now preform the unblocking of the air chakra, they must be clear for the chi remap to have any success-_

P'Li hits the wall of a container, burying her face in her arms as she tries not to weep, as that only draws attention to them, and attention is the last thing she needs. Zaheer moves over to her, telling her that it's alright, it's over you killed him, remember, hit him right in the chest at Bei Lu, come on P'li come back to me-

Ming-Hua rushes over to her side, attempting to hug the distraught veteran with her shoulders. It's almost comical. Ghazan glares at her from behind his shaggy hair.

"You should probably scram." Izumi nods, for once at a loss of a witty comeback or final remark, and she picks up her knapsack, slinging it over her shoulder as she turns her back on the four anarchists. She pulls out her silver cigarette holder, deftly removing two cigarettes. She tosses one to Ghazan, lighting it mid-flight with a burst of flame, and the ex-Triad bender catches it between his fingers.

"Something to remember me by. Goodbye. I doubt we'll meet again."

Ghazan smiles, nodding in farewell.

And Izumi steps into the open-air madness of the port at night, sea breeze fresh on her face with the whole world open to her. She finds herself grinning, despite the horror story of the doragon-sha in the alleyways of the container city. She's never left the city, not really gone more than a hundred miles from the palace. This will be a first for her.

As she leans over the banisters of the _Mizu no Hebi_, wind rippling in her hair, wondering at the possibilities the North holds for her, she almost notices a foursome of shadows, sneaking onto the ship via a porthole with nothing in their hands.

_A.N. Yeah, I made young Izumi a cross between a twenties flapper and Azula. Yes, I made the Red Lotus into suspicious, mentally traumatised tweens. Yes, I made teenage Ghazan speak like he's from the , teenage Zaheer behaves much more angrily than in Book 3 because he's a teenager, and teenage anarchists tend to be angry at everything. Yes, the combustion benders are waaayyy more sinister than people make them out to be._

_I needed something to distract me from The First Citizen and my work, to give me a bit of a break. I hope I didn't traumatize you too much with the history of the Red Lotus members. Too bad the last 2k words or so became a bitch to write._

_Reviews are my lifeblood. This fic in and of itself is a oneshot, but the universe that it's set in may or may not become its own fic :) We will see, once The First Citizen is done._


End file.
